Results of Czech adVENTURE and Slovak Startup Awards 2012

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Czech adVENTURE Awards

The Czech startup-competition adVENTURE was held this week and we are proud to report on the three startups that have emerged at the top (hat tip to Vojta Bednář at Tyinternety). The top finishers at the competition were Spoteee, Celebrio, and BuddyBet.

The competition, which was held jointly by the Association for Foreign Investment (AFI) and the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic, was held in Prague on November 22nd and included 35 participants. Honestly, I’m not sure as to what the prizes were for this particular competition. Unlike other competitions, it seems that entrants here competed simply for notoriety and pride, and perhaps a bit of a press coverage.

Spoteee, which is a service geared towards improving fitness experiences. While running and working-out can sometimes been a tedious affair, this startup aims to improve the experience by allowing those who visit clubs to “run through” various Czech and foreign cities or along nature-trails.

Celebrio’s is geared towards pensioners, this service aims to simplify computers and could theoretically be used by anyone a bit unsure about modern technology. Simply put, this service aims to make computers “less threatening”, by offering software which has been simplified about as much as it can be. Essentially, the user can access the software by going to the website, following the instructions, and downloading it.

BuddyBet markets itself as a betting-site, but there’s a bit of a twist. Unlike traditional sites, where odds and lines are given, this is a site which enables users (“buddies”) to simply bet against one another and set their own rules. The startup is now based in the UK.

Finally, the other entry worth mentioning is PhoneCopy, which was apparently re-entered after being passed over in this competition last year. Essentially, this service seeks to help users to manage contact-information on multiple mobile devices by allowing them to synchronize their mobile phones and the company’s server. Users can manage contact info on the site and then simply send it their mobile phones (or vice versa). The company’s Twitter account states they now have more than 200,000 users, so it appears that they’re doing fairly well at the moment.

Slovak Startup Awards

We wrote about this competition a week ago and are happy to return that the winners have been named. Asana (comfortable chair design) won from the Art & Design, A*space (developer of MySpectral, a USB spectrometer) won from Science, Excalibur (digital security that combines QR codes, SMS and web interface) won for Digital, and Mapz (mobile navigation for visually impaired) won in the Society category.